Twinless Twin
by AppleZeri
Summary: Ban is missing Ginji again. Where Ginji's gone to is very far away but never hard to reach, so maybe it's time for Ban to go find him. (Character death)


It was nights like these that Ban hated the most—sitting alone with his eyes shut tight, the silence caving in on him, and not being able to do a damned thing about it. He rolled his head back and forth on the headrest but was persistently eluded by a comfortable position. Night after night his body was all but incapacitated with fatigue and yet his mind still raced with an annoying kind of nervous energy that kept him from the blessing of sleep. He needed someone to talk to, someone to just listen to him pour out all the thoughts crowding up his head so he might have a chance to feel calm again. He couldn't stand being awake with nobody to talk to but himself—he didn't like the types of conversations his mind always came up with. And he didn't have Ginji to wake up and make listen to his midnight ramblings anymore.

He shifted again in his seat, agitated. His mind was already drifting off to thoughts he didn't want to get into.

He tossed and turned some more and tried to focus on the world outside the windshield. In the middle of the night, parked all alone in a desolate area, a person could start to get the feeling that they were the only soul left on earth. But just beyond the buildings that encircled him, serving as a kind of protective shield, the city was still bustling with myriad people who were passing their nighttime hours wide awake just like he was. He wished he could spend his time the way those people did, but he lacked the energy for things like that now. In all honesty, that was probably for the best. Even if he did have energy he'd probably just use it to become an alcoholic, and there was no reason to add to his wretchedness when he was already broke and homeless.

Ha. 'Broke and homeless.' Those were two things that he'd never batted an eye at in the past, but it was different now. Back then, even with no money in his pocket and no place to hang his hat, he still had things that made his life worth waking up for. Now it amounted to nothing more than a piece of shit car and a tab waiting for him at the Honky Tonk, with the difference being that he couldn't envision a brighter future anymore and so had no motivation to do anything about it. He didn't even have the hope of getting another recovery job again. His mind was just too preoccupied and he had disappointed too many customers. Who would want him when Shido had a recovery business too?

"You're going to sit back and let your rival take over your job without a fight? That's not like you Ban," Ginji's gentle voice spoke to him from the direction of the passenger seat.

Ban smiled bitterly at the sound. "Yes it is, Ginji. Time changes everything. The Ban you knew d—"  
( _Died along with you_ _ **.**_ _)_ _ **  
**_How much time had passed since that day? And yet the words still got stuck on his lips. He reached his hand out and touched the cold leather of the empty passenger seat.

So let Shido have his job. Shido could have monopoly over the whole damn recovery empire for all he cared. Shido obviously didn't. How the hell had that monkey shit been able to carry on with his business—with his _life_ —as if nothing had happened? For as long as Ban had known him, that pain in the ass had always put his heart and soul into protecting Ginji, but after that day it seemed like he had only mourned for a week and then it was business as usual.  
But then again, Ban couldn't really remember how long everyone else had mourned. The concept of time didn't have much meaning to him anymore. The distance between that day and now could have been an hour or a lifetime for all he knew.

And it really had felt like a lifetime ago that he had lost Ginji. A lifetime full of words he wished he had said and chances he'd never be able to take again, all because of his cowardice.

He ran his hands over his haggard face and through his hair, which hung limply from the rain that had come and gone several days ago.

 _'Here I go again. My thoughts get tangled up too easily. Why do they always lead to the same place?'_

Why couldn't he just block them out and move on?

Yes. It was definitely time to move on, one way or another.

He opened the glove compartment and took his trump card out from its hiding place. He slid the slender white stick out of its beat-up paper carton and breathed in the sweet aroma of his only remaining friend.

A cigarette laced with the most potent poison he could procure from his contacts off the grid of polite society. He'd had it for God knows how long. It was meant to be used only in the most dire of circumstances. If he somehow managed to get himself backed into a corner, for example, he'd rather die by his own hand than somebody else's, and with this he'd easily be able to. Even if it was never to be used, it comforted him just knowing it was there. He relished the feeling of being free to make his own choices and pave the path to his own destiny, and that included when to live and when to die.

"Are you sure this is the answer, Ban? Do you really want to just _give up_?" that voice again spoke to him, sounding so close now he could almost feel the warm breath against his ear.

"I'm _not_ giving up," he said, clenching his fingers around the steering wheel. "It's only giving up if you still have something left to fight for, and I have nothing." He took the cigarette into his mouth and let it dangle, unlit, between his lips.

The concept felt even more concrete now that he had said it out loud. He had come to realize a long time ago that he had more enemies than friends, including enemies that used to be friends. There weren't really a lot of worthwhile people left in his life anymore. Only Paul and Natsumi, and even then Paul was just a maybe; they would never really be friends until Ban paid his tab. And Natsumi was just a teenage girl who Ban had nothing in common with. So what was left to keep him here?

He caught a glimpse of himself in the rear view mirror. Grey skin, unkempt hair, deep lines creasing the skin between his eyebrows. The sight he made was so pathetic it was almost absurd.

"Oh Ginji," he slowly wheezed out a ragged sigh. "You would cry if you saw me now."

He reached for his lighter and played around with it, watching the flame spring up with a flick of his thumb and then disappear again, snuffed out under the lid, over and over.

A low rumble of thunder reverberated in the distance. He leaned forward to get a better look out of the windshield and saw sparks of lightning in the dark clouds that had been coming and going regularly over the past few weeks. A genuine smile crept onto his face for the first time in months.

"Is that you, Ginji? Are you watching me?" With a flick of his thumb the flame shot up again, and this time he left it to burn. "Or maybe you're telling me to hurry up and come find you."

He brought the flame to the cigarette that had grown soggy in his mouth.

The thunder grew louder and the first few raindrops splattered onto his windows, pitter-patter, pitter-pat.

He inhaled the smoke deeply and leaned back against his headrest. At last, he slept.


End file.
